In the wake of the Newtown, Conn. massacre, the national conversation has included no lack of conjecture that the media we consume is to blame for the violence. Most famously, NRA second-in-command Wayne Lapierre's Dec. 21 speech in Washington, D.C. featured a lengthy segment in which he pointed the finger at video games and movies and singled out a number of decades-old films as particularly culpable. Lapierre was roundly mocked for his tone-deaf diatribe, but he was hardly unique. Numerous public figures on the right and left have gone out of their way to make certain we spend more time talking about Quentin Tarantino and Natural Born Killers than about access to assault weapons. more »

The NRA finally broke its week-long silence after the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut today with a press conference — technically a speech, as no questions were answered — that proved once again that reactionaries are as terrible at popular culture as they are at generating positive outcomes from their preferred policies. The real culprit to blame for tragedies such as Newtown, according to NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre? Movies.more »